


Here We Are Again

by StrongerTogether



Category: Chasing Life (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-06 07:15:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13406172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrongerTogether/pseuds/StrongerTogether
Summary: Brenna is proud of the life she's made for herself. She's still a daughter, still a sister, still a niece and a granddaughter and a friend, but now she's also a godmother and a proud professional patient advocate - recorded to be the youngest and brightest in Boston, according to some sources - and an adult with a good head on her still strong shoulders.She is still missing one thing though.And she never expected it to be brought back to her in the form of a patient chart handed to her across her desk.





	Here We Are Again

 

**Boston**

**2024**

   

    It had taken her twenty-six years but at least she could finally say she was happy, thought Brenna Carver as she stared into the reflective glass of her full-length mirror. Down the stairs outside her open bedroom door, she could hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet and smell the rich scent of brewing coffee coming from the first floor. She smiled at the typical early morning sounds of the household, and as she scanned her reflection once more, her eyes caught on a picture she had tucked into the corner.

    Inside her room, there were framed photographs everywhere and the walls were scattered with bulletin boards overflowing with pictures documenting Brenna's life. Some were of her with one or more of her sisters and some with her parents or Grandma Emma or Uncle George. There were at least a dozen or so of her with her godchildren at various stages of their lives, from the day they were born into present day. Others featured her high school graduation, the year right after high school that she had spent traveling, and her time at Northeastern U. Tucked into her bookshelves were albums full of more pictures, older ones of her and April when they were little and of her dad.

    This picture though, she had tucked into her mirror for a reason. All the others showed a continuation of her life thus far, but this one held the image of a person whose loss had made Brenna's world stop for awhile. It was of Finn. It had been just after their high school graduation when they had thought he had been in remission, before the cancer had come back more aggressively than ever. He was holding onto Brenna and smiling wide, standing on a shore line with the late afternoon sun shining on their faces and on the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. George had taken them with him to San Francisco when he had gone to consult on a case with an old colleague.

    Tucked away somewhere else was the card from Finn’s memorial the following January.

    Brenna had left for Europe a week later, much to her mother's chagrin and anxiety.

    "Bren?" a voice called up the stairs, interrupting Brenna's nostalgic musings. "The coffee's ready!"

    "Be right down!" Brenna called back, checking her appearance once more in the mirror before walking as quickly as possible in her professional pumps.

-

    As expected, Beth was waiting for her at the breakfast bar when she arrived in the kitchen at the foot of the stairs. The first floor of the townhouse in the Back Bay that they shared was loft-like in appearance, open and spacious with hardly any walls sectioning off the rooms. The second floor, however, held three distinctly separate bedrooms. The flooring was all restored hardwood and so were the support beams, while the walls were mostly carefully conserved red brick.

    Beth looked up from the drawings she had scattered across the breakfast bar when she heard the sound of the notoriously creaky second step from the bottom. The older woman offered Brenna a wan smile and she could tell by the rise of Beth's eyebrows that Brenna was giving her her patented disapproving stare. She had her mom to blame for that one.

    "Good morning," Beth greeted her all the same.

    "'Morning," Brenna returned, accepting the cup of coffee Beth offered to her and stealing a bite of the toast on Beth's plate which Beth made no protestations to. "You look tired. Did you even sleep last night?"

    Beth sighed and it was in that same exhausted way that reflected her exhausted appearance. "Sydney's been having nightmares," Beth offered by way of explanation.

    Brenna dropped the slice of toast back onto the plate. "Again?"

    Beth nodded. "I don't know why. I don't let her watch any movies or television programs that might scare her, and god knows there's nothing scary around here," she went on, gesturing around their home. "I'm following the parenting books to the letter and I still feel like I'm failing as a mother."

    Brenna had been living with Beth since she had returned from traveling abroad and started college at Northeastern University. Beth had encouraged her through five grueling years of double-majoring in Human Services and Health Sciences, and Brenna had helped Beth with juggling her career and family. It was a system that worked well for the both of them and so they had continued on after Brenna graduated.

    Tilting her head to the side and trying to smile reassuringly at Beth, Brenna reached her hand out and took her surrogate-sister's. "You're not failing as a mom, Beth. You're a single mother of twins. Sydney's seven years old. She's gonna have nightmares sometimes," Brenna told her. "Every little kid has them. I did."

    "Maybe I should talk to your mom," Beth mused.

    "Well, she is an _actual_ psychologist, so that might be a good idea in more ways than one," the younger girl offered. "Speaking of, I should get over there for the weekly family video chat with April before work. You're sure you can't come?"

    Beth shook her head sadly. "No, I have to get to the studio and start working on putting together these designs," she answered, gesturing to the strewn portfolio of fashion designs on the counter. "The investors are expecting me to present the new pieces on Monday, so I've really got to get on the ball, but please give April all my love?"

    "You know I will," Brenna promised, then she gave Beth a quick, tight hug and grabbed her jacket and bag on the way out the door. She paused to turn back and say, "Oh! I’ve got the twins’ bags all packed for school and I'll pick them up from the center tonight, don't worry!"

    Beth’s body slumped as she gave Brenna a grateful look. “If you weren’t such a dedicated patient advocate, I’d poach you as a nanny,” she said.

    Brenna simply smiled and opened the front door.

“You're a lifesaver, Brenna Carver!"

    "I know!"

-

    Brenna was quiet when she stepped into the Carver house, not wanting to wake anyone if everyone wasn't already awake, but that notion went out the door as soon as Grandma Emma came walking out of the kitchen looking fresh-faced and well-dressed. It was clear from the look on her face when she saw Brenna that her youngest granddaughter was not who she had been expecting to find at the door, but she recovered quickly with a happy smile. Brenna attributed her on-par pokerface all to her grandmother; for obvious reasons, she much preferred it to the alternative of having inherited her father's deceptiveness.

    "Good morning, dear," Emma greeted her with a kiss on her face.

    "Hey, Grandma," Brenna answered, accepting the warm hug Emma offered her. "Expecting Sam?"

    "As a matter of fact, I was," Emma replied. They were interrupted by a knock on the door. "And that'll be him now." Emma kissed her granddaughter's cheek again. "Say hello to your sister for me."

    "Will do," Brenna said, watching with an amused smirk as Grandma slipped out the door to see her boyfriend. Even after seven years, it was still strange to think of her _grandmother_ having a _boyfriend_ . Silently Brenna thought, _She's doing better than April and me._

    "Brenna? Is that you?" Sara called from in the kitchen.

    Brenna smirked, stepping into the kitchen and into her mother's line of sight. "Um, because so many other people have keys to our house?" she joked, flashing a wide grin to her mom.

    "Well, you could have been your sister or George," she pointed out.

    Coming to sit down next to her mother, who was busy fiddling on her laptop with a look of consternation on her face, Brenna frowned. "Do you mean my sister who you're clearly trying to figure out how to use your new video chat program to talk to because she’s in Italy? Or the one who still knocks on the door before she uses the key you gave her three years ago?" Brenna teased.

She gently pried the device from her mother's frustrated grip, tapped a few select keys and turned the screen back toward her mother. "Just right-click on April's icon and select 'Call'."

    Sara looked from the computer to her daughter incredulously. "How did you do that? I've been trying to figure this thing out for twenty minutes."

    "I'm pretty sure it's a millennial-generation thing," Brenna told her off-handedly. "Plus I minored in Filmmaking, remember? Where _is_ Uncle George anyway? I thought he's been staying here lately."

    “He has been,” her mom began.

    Meandering across the kitchen to the stove, Sara set the tea kettle to boil, then opened the oven. If Brenna had to hazard a guess, she would say that her mother had probably put breakfast into the oven to keep warm until George got back.

It struck Brenna unexpectedly that it no longer seemed strange to witness her mom and late-father's brother behaving not unlike her parents once had. It made her wonder, had April and Natalie adjusted to Sara and George's relationship as easily as Brenna had? In her eldest sister's case, probably not. It had taken April awhile, even while the couple was still kind-of-not-really trying to maintain some subtlety with their newly established relationship. Natalie had just been so happy not to be permanently shunned and hated by the Carvers after her mother had gotten George arrested and essentially destroyed his career in medicine that she couldn't have cared less about the nature of Sara and George's relationship.  

    "He got called to the hospital by Dr. Toliver last night. Something about a patient in crisis," Sara informed her.

    Brenna frowned and took her phone out to check it, suddenly remembering that she couldn't remember the last time she had done so. The lack of messages only deepened her frown. "I didn't get a call about it," she said.

    "Maybe it wasn't one of your clients?" Sara suggested, noticing Brenna's sudden sullenness.

    "Mom, I'm one of the only two patient advocates at the outreach center and I'm the senior advocate. They're _all_ my clients," Brenna reminded her. She looked back down to her phone and bit her lip. "Maybe I should call Uncle George, just to check in."

    "Bren, it's Friday morning and you're not due into the office until eleven. George has a lot of experience, let him–"

    A knock sounded at the door and, before either woman could move to answer it, Natalie's voice echoed through the halls, " 'Morning, Carvers!".

    "In the kitchen, Natalie!" Sara called out to her.

    A moment later, Natalie appeared into the kitchen. She looked first from Brenna's disgruntled appearance to Sara's polite smile and they all knew that she knew something was up. She set down her bag and put her hand on her hip, gesturing between the two women.

    "Okay. What's up?" she asked expectantly, as if she asked this question a lot. Which, she kind of did.

Suddenly being pinned under the hardened stares of both her mother and older half-sister almost made Brenna long for the days when the two women never agreed on anything. _Almost_.

    Six years ago, none of them ever would have thought that Natalie would be found standing in the Carver’s kitchen every Friday morning for family breakfast. It had taken Brenna all but disowning her in the hallway of her high school for Natalie to decide to scrap the publishing contract and the book itself. Losing the bond she had with her little sister, ruining her uncle’s career and life, betraying her quite possibly dying older sister, and sabotaging the relationship she was building with her paternal grandmother wasn’t worth the money, she had realized.

Once Olivia had been informed of Natalie’s decision, she had called the police and told them of George’s involvement in Thomas Carver’s death. Natalie had had a huge falling out with her mother upon learning of Olivia’s actions and spent all of her savings bailing her uncle out of jail. She had testified on George's behalf, fought like hell to undo the mess she had inadvertently made, and held it all together while Sara flew to Italy to talk some sense into her first-born when Beth called to inform them of April's sudden death wish. After all was said and done, Natalie was left feeling more a part of a family than she ever had before.

Long gone were the days when Natalie was an outsider looking in on the Carver family.

    As Sara had said all those years ago, for better or worse, Natalie _was_ a Carver at heart.

    "Brenna wants to leave family breakfast for work," Sara informed Natalie presently.

    Natalie raised one immaculately plucked eyebrow. " _Seriously_ ? Sara's cooking or weird-smelling hospitals and mountains of paperwork . . ." – Natalie raised her hands on either side of her, imitating a balancing scale before raising her first hand way up and lowering the other – "I'm thinking Mama Carver's blueberry pancakes win, hands down," she stated. "Besides, if _I_ " – she gestured to herself – "am mandated to attend family breakfasts, then so are you, sweetheart."

    "Grandma and April aren't here!" Brenna pointed out lamely.

    "April attends Carver family breakfast every week via video chat even though she's like four separate time zones away and Emma's out living life with her man," Natalie countered with all the finesse of a second-year law student and only a moderate amount of suggestiveness at the end. "Do you have a new significant other you'd rather spend your time with that we just haven't been informed of?"

    Brenna withered under the intrigued stares of the other two women and finally slumped down in her seat like she was sixteen all over again and muttered. "Fine, you win. You may rest your case, Counselor."

    She was only saved by Natalie's inevitable smug correction of "Future Counselor" by the door opening and closing once more and footsteps coming down the hall. Seconds later, George appeared in the doorway, looking a little worse for the wear. Brenna thought that he looked like he might have aged an extra five years in the time since she had said goodbye to him yesterday at work.

She recognized that look immediately.

    George took a few steps further into the kitchen and briefly kissed Sara’s cheek. "Sorry I'm late," he said.

    When his haunted gaze turned on her, Brenna swallowed thickly and asked, "Who?"

    "Bren . . ." he said slowly, clearly not wanting to rehash all of it right now in front of their family. "Let's talk about this later at the office, okay?"

    Brenna backed down easily, taking note of the tension in her uncle’s posture and the way he rubbed his temples almost absently. Her mom and Natalie were looking on curiously. April was still waiting for their call and it had to have been close to three-p.m. in Italy when her sister would begin to get her mid-afternoon wanderlust.

    "Yeah, okay," she conceded. "Let's just call April and eat."

.    .    .

    April looked good for having been half a world away for the last four months, Brenna thought. Of course, her oldest sister always had a way of looking good, even when she was sick. As far as Brenna could tell though (and Brenna had gotten _really_ good at telling after more than half a decade), April was feeling as healthy and determined as ever, a far cry from the resigned and hopeless woman who had considered simply letting herself die in Sicily all those years ago.

    It was possible Brenna still held a trace amount of resentment toward April for that.

    "It's really good to see your face, Ape," Brenna told her, staring at the laptop screen featuring her oldest sister's smile. "We really miss you."

    April laughed. "Does Beth still hate me for leaving her?" she asked.

    "Oh, yeah, of course," Brenna replied, thinking it should have been obvious.

    "Well then, I guess I'll have to make it up to her when I come home next week," April tossed out conversationally, looking down from the camera to stare at her meal with a smirk.

    "You're coming home next week?!" their mother nearly shouted. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

    Again, April let out a laugh, as if enjoying her own inside joke. "I just decided for sure this morning," she said. "I’ll be leaving Rome late next Thursday night and landing at Logan by Friday mid-afternoon."

    Brenna thought that if her mother's smile were any wider it might actually crack her face. She shared a look with Natalie and Uncle George who appeared to have had the same thought as her, since they were both hiding their smirks behind their coffee mugs and glancing at each other and back at her. From the knowing glint in April's eyes, she was on the same page as well.

    "We'll be so happy to have you home, sweetheart," Sara told her warmly.

    "I can pick you up," Brenna offered. "Uncle George is making me take a day off that day anyway." Her eyes cut towards her uncle suspiciously. "You didn't happen to know anything about this, did you?"

    George stood and began collecting the breakfast dishes. "I cannot tell a lie," was his only response to the veiled allegation.

    "I wish I could be there too," Nat said, "but law school is kind of kicking my ass. Remind me again why I wanted to become a lawyer?"

    Brenna laughed out loud, looking from April's face on the screen to Natalie's glare. "Probably because, of the things you are good at, arguing is the most profitable," she said, only laughing harder when Natalie moved to smack her with the cloth napkin that had been sitting between them on the table.

    On the telecom, April was laughing too.

–––––––– ∞ ––––––––

    As soon as they had made it through the door of the outreach center, Brenna was already back on her path of inquisition.

    " _Who_?" Brenna repeated her question from earlier, this time much more insistently.

    George hesitated for a moment, but then reluctantly answered, "Arthur Caulfield."

    Brenna nodded, feeling the hard lump in her throat that typically formed when she was given bad news about a patient. It was part of her job not to get emotionally invested or attached to the people who came to them for assistance and guidance through all the overwhelming aspects that came on top of having a life-threatening condition. That being said, it was never easy losing one of them.

    Especially Art, who was a forty-seven-year-old widower of twelve years with a caring sister, two devoted daughters, one of whom had just recently married and the other expecting a baby soon, and three loving grandchildren.

    Carcinoma seriously sucked.

    "Shit," Brenna breathed out finally.

    She sat back in her office chair and looked down at the picture sitting in its frame on her desk. It was a family photo taken by one of Beth's photographer friends years ago, just after April went back into remission and not long before she became a novelist and world traveler. The picture featured her mother and George standing side-by-side with their arms around each other looking proud and happy. April was sandwiched between her mother on her right and Brenna on her left side with a big, white, goofy smile. Natalie stood next to Beth and just half a step in front of Uncle George, whose hand was resting on her shoulder; both Brenna and Beth were each holding one of the twins, who were no more than six months old at the time. Tucked into the corner of the frame was an old wallet-sized photo of her dad, no longer present but still always with them. The edges were frayed and the once sleek surface of the old photograph was creased and wrinkled, just as her memory of her father was.

    “You know, sometimes I wonder why I went into a business that deals in death everyday?” Brenna though aloud to her uncle. “After . . . _everything_ … with Dad and April… Finn… Leo….” Brenna shook her head, dark auburn locks falling around her face. “Why do I do this? Why didn’t I just go to film school like I had planned?”

    George walked further into Brenna’s office and took a seat. He was quiet in thought for a moment before he looked at her sympathetically. “Because it’s who you are, Bren. You weren’t even quite sixteen when April was diagnosed, but you were the first person she told. You held her hand through all the worst parts of her illness, even held her up all on your own at times. You were with Finn every day until the very end. You’re strong, Brenna,” George told her. “You’re a fighter. And these people who come to us, they need someone to fight for them when they can’t.

“You know, I’ve watched you work with these patients, Brenna. You take their hands and guide them through even their darkest day so that they know they’re not alone. You don’t stop looking out for their best interests, their best options, and the best _in them_ until their very end. You don’t give up and, sweetheart, not everyone that you help is guaranteed to survive, but there are a lot of people who _need you_ , Brenna. That’s why you do this.”

    Brenna swallowed past the lump in her throat and nodded. “Okay.”

    George peered curiously at her. “Have I got my usual Battlin’ Brenna back?”

    Brenna laughed at the old nickname she had earned from her defiance and competitiveness as a child. “Yeah. Yeah, you got me,” she confirmed.

    “Good. Because we’ve got a new potential client and I think I should leave this one up to you,” he said, extending a thick file toward her with an odd look on his face.

    Trying to laugh off the bad feeling she was getting, Brenna took the file and asked, “What do you mean ‘potential’ client? We take on anyone who comes in asking for our help.”

    “I think that it’s in everyone’s best interest if I leave this one up to your own personal discretion,” George told her while Brenna scanned the new chart.

    “Stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” Brenna summarized. Her eyes lifted to meet her uncle’s. “Okay…? So? I mean, it’s a tough case but we’ve taken on worse-”

    “Read the name on the file.”

    As soon as Brenna did, she felt as if her heart stopped. Her breath caught in her throat and she felt like she was suffocating. Her eyes kept scanning over the name printed on the file even as her mind continued to malfunction: _Danville, G._

.    .    .


End file.
